Subject: Java Tron Game / AI

From: "gl" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 21:39:34 +0100

First of all, very interesting.

However, your Java game is full of flaws:

The first (perhaps not a flaw) - that the game wraps around the edges - this is unlike the film, and very confusing to a human player.

Second, the AI allows effectively diagonal lines by zig zagging at speeds that no human player can match.  This makes it interesting academically, but has no real value against determining how closely it can simulate a human player, or beat a human player using similar skills.

Related, more restrictions should be put on the computer player - the fast turns it performs are virtually impossible to do for a human.  It should ideally have a reaction time that prevents it from making too many changes to it's path.

Finally, pixel doubling the game would be helpful, as near edges it is easy to loose sight of your own trail (at higher resolutions anyway).

The real game also complicates matters by having different speeds (at a minimum a slow and fast speed).

I understand that many simplifications were taken for the desired AI research, however I'm not sure what the value of a computer player is that breaks too many of a human player's rules.  Again, the research goals probably determine this, but from a players point of view (and this applies to all game AI), they want computer controlled players to simulate humans and their restrictions, rather than 'cheat' because they can.
--
gl